In hindsight, should we have resigned Earl and Sherm?

[OrangeGravy]

The only way you can evaluate this is to look at the situation AT THE TIME the decision needed to made. Both were getting old and coming off of serious injuries. Signing them at the money it would've taken was a bad move unless you could guarantee their health going forward, which is impossible. It turned out both got back to good health, but you can't evaluate the moves on anything that happens after the decision. The correct decision was made for this franchise at the time.

 

[Appyhawk]

I love both those guys. Both are Seahawk icons. But we couldn't afford one, let alone both. With regard to way this year turned out for us I would say keeping Sherm might have been what could have put us over the hump that kept us from advancing in the playoffs to the SB.
Take Sherm from SF and add another corner to us and I see us winning Div crown and top seed for Conf, and solid shot at being NFC rep in SB.
I don't think you could say that about Earl. Diggs is too close to same level, but we have no one even close to Sherm's level.

 

[ZagHawk]

This question is only looking at production and not thinking about the intangibles of locker room and players defying coaches in front of new players who need to buy into the system. Truthfully, as soon as Bevell was kept, and no accountability was taken after SB 49, they should have let them all go. Everyone seems to forget these professional athletes are 23-25 year olds. How logical would you have been at 23-25 after a SB defeat the way it went and would have returned back to the system and coaching staff who in your opinion took no accountability and put the QB on the pedestal.

 

[Attyla the Hawk]

Well, it was stupid to release Sherman. We got nothing for him that way. We didn't have to resign him as he was already under contract.

Basically, we used his cap relief to sign Ed Dickson. So I'd consider it trading Sherman and a 4th round pick for Dickson. Since he would have netted a 4th in compensation. And that's being conservative because he would have demonstrated he had overcome his Achilles injury by the end of 2018.

Letting Earl go is a bit of a mixed bag. How many losses could we pin on Tedric being our FS instead of Earl? We did net a 3rd round comp for him, so we will know what the 'trade' was. We did have to trade both Vannett and a 7th round pick in order to acquire Diggs as a result of the loss of Earl. So basically, we traded Earl, Vannett and a 7th round pick for whomever we select at 96ish overall and Diggs. The jury is still out.

It's worth noting though, that Earl this year for Baltimore isn't the same Earl that played for us. He's still very good. But not EARL that we remember. Played a lot less hair on fire, but definitely savvy and shut down the deep/middle. Something we struggled mightily for most of this past season.

In hindsight, I think it was a mistake to let Sherman go for nothing. Earl's leaving probably nets a positive. If we don't suffer the pain of having TT at FS, and were toting Earl's salary -- we don't make the deal for Diggs. We got younger, cheaper and not significantly worse at FS as a result.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

I'm looking forward to a time when we can appreciate and/or concentrate on the players that actually are ON THE TEAM. Instead of dwelling on the past.

 

[Attyla the Hawk]

I'm looking forward to a time when we can appreciate and/or concentrate on the players that actually are ON THE TEAM. Instead of dwelling on the past.

There are plenty of threads that do just that. It's not like this one was a bait and switch.

 

[sutz]

Unlike what is considered to be common wisdom, hindsight is not necessarily 20/20.

 

[classicaaron]

yes to both if they would have agreed to just shut and play or even just keep their chip on the shoulder and point it at opposing teams instead of the front office. but I don't think either one of them would have done that so no we shouldn't have kept either.

I don't think we can just translate their current play and say they would have done the same here because I don't think either one of them would have been as productive here as they are on their current team.

 

[Sgt. Largent]

yes to both if they would have agreed to just shut and play or even just keep their chip on the shoulder and point it at opposing teams instead of the front office. but I don't think either one of them would have done that so no we shouldn't have kept either.

I don't think we can just translate their current play and say they would have done the same here because I don't think either one of them would have been as productive here as they are on their current team.

But they wouldn't have shut up, both would have continued to act out and be locker room cancers..........even if they did get paid.

Sure, in a perfect world where we all see that both Earl and Sherm are still good maybe we should have kept them.

But the reality is we not only desperately needed the cap room of getting off their monster salaries, but we needed to clean house of all the negativity that was going on.

It's not a coincidence that Russell had his best year ever this year and was the front runner for MVP for over half the season once Pete and John cleaned house of all the Russell haters in the locker room undermining his leadership.

 

[TwistedHusky]

If you don't acknowledge your mistakes, you will keep making them.

Sherman is on record as stating he made a similar offer to the Seahawks and they turned him down. So clearly someone did not want him on the team. Did they let him go because he was a PIA?

The thing is, if you want to win - you sometimes need to deal with it. You will have people you don't like, if not cannot stand, because they produce on the field.

(Talk to the 49ers about Charles Haley, the stories of all the horrible things he did almost stretch belief - stories of him jerking off in front of players' wives and gfs, peeing on the desks/lockers, etc. Most are probably more legend than truth, but they apparently shipped him off because he was a PIA.

Interestingly enough, he ended up in Dallas...SF's rival. And Dallas won multiple SBs, instead of SF - because Dallas edged out SF repeatedly. Haley was a big part of that. SF did not get to another SB, until much later. Haley wasn't the whole reason, but SF took a while to live down letting go of Haley until the 49ers built what was pretty much an All-Star team back in 95.)

Now we released Sherman, let him go to our rival, he immediately shores up one of the bigger weaknesses for the 49ers (secondary) and they end up in the SB instead of us.

Our coaches should have put winning ahead of their personal preferences.

We had nobody to even replace him. Keeping Sherman was risky, but not nearly at the #s he was offering since most would be production-based. It didn't need to be 20-20 hindsight because there was plenty of upside in keeping him and not a ton of downside, other than some people on our coaching staff getting their feelings hurt. Again, with nobody to replace him - we left ourselves with a big hole.

Our coaches' likely worry about their feelings strengthened a rival and contributed to that rival making a SB vs us even finally being effective in a divisional playoff game in almost half a decade. Can you call that anything BUT a yawning mistake?

 

[TwistedHusky]

Some are saying we had to release Sherman to 'clean house'.

And did all that 'cleaning house' accomplish anything? Russell Wilson had the best season he has ever had in the regular season. So that was fun.

But have we done any better in the playoffs? Nope. Same story of getting blown out in the divisional playoffs by halftime. No improvement at all. Even with all the 'house cleaning'.

If anything, it looked for all the world like we could have really used a good corner or safety in the playoffs.

Sure, we have a slightly better regular-season record (which is likely the product of playing 1/4 of the season against backup QBs instead of all this 'housecleaning'). But other than that, we didn't get any better in the playoffs even with Wilson playing out of his mind all year.

Weird.

 

[Sgt. Largent]

Now we released Sherman, let him go to our rival, he immediately shores up one of the bigger weaknesses for the 49ers (secondary) and they end up in the SB instead of us.

Immediately shores up one of their biggest weaknesses?

PFF graded the Niners secondary last year as the worst in the entire league. So he shored up nothing other than his own position.

https://www.ninersnation.com/2019/1/9/1 ... iski-tartt

So knock off the revisionist history of how things went down. Because the reality of how it went down is that for the entire 2016 and 2017 season Sherman fought with his teammates, coaches and the local press. Then he got hurt, and Pete and John used it as an excuse to jettison an injured player that was set to make 14M a year AND was a royal pain in the ass.

Maybe if we had the cap space we do now Pete might have fought harder to mend the fences with both Sherman and Earl. But we didn't, we literally had no cap space, and if you want blame the FO for that? Sure, maybe they mismanaged the cap for a 2-3 year period putting us in a situation where we had no choice but to not offer Sherman and Earl a 3rd contract.

But with no cap space and having JUST gotten burned with Kam's 3rd contract that was going to haunt us for another two years? Hard to blame Pete and John for not wanting to give monster contracts to two aging DB's that were also pains in the ass.

 

[TwistedHusky]

On that front, you are correct Largent.

But Sherman gave interviews saying he offered to restructure and give a similar contract to the Seahawks. It isn't out of bounds to suggest he could have been embellishing.

Are you saying the only way we could have kept him was at that high price? He seemed to imply, in multiple interviews, otherwise.

Earl, I agree, Earl wanted the Brinks truck. But Sherman I don't know if that was the only option for the FO.

 

[Sgt. Largent]

On that front, you are correct Largent.

But Sherman gave interviews saying he offered to restructure and give a similar contract to the Seahawks. It isn't out of bounds to suggest he could have been embellishing.

Are you saying the only way we could have kept him was at that high price? He seemed to imply, in multiple interviews, otherwise.

Earl, I agree, Earl wanted the Brinks truck. But Sherman I don't know if that was the only option for the FO.

I love Richard the player, he's one of my all time favorites. But the dude's a liar, he just is. He lied about what went down with Jim Moore, he lied about the hand shaking thing with Baker Mayfield, so who knows how truthful he was about offering his amazing incentive laden deal to the Hawks.

After all that went down and us cutting him after getting injured? I doubt it.

Even if he did, I doubt Pete and John would accept it, the entire organization was ready to move on. So let's stop being hindsight GM's and projecting what's happening now with Earl and Sherm and creating scenarios where we should have kept them.

No we shouldn't of, and more importantly no we couldn't have afforded them or their disruption. Good for them, I wish them both the best, but I'm also glad we moved on, and the players agree because guys like Russell, KJ and Bobby said this is the best locker room they've ever been a part of.

 

[TwistedHusky]

Good point Largent.

Nobody could have swallowed the 14M per if that was really what we were stuck with.

Sherman having a history of altering the truth a bit does have to play into this. If we really had no other options but full price, we couldn't have resigned him. I would like to think if the FO had keeping him a priority we could have found a way, but it is difficult to point to something obvious that would have worked.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

Well said. And BOTH of these guys contributed to their departure in their own way. To act and/or ignore how they were acting and thinking that magically everyone would have been just fine? Wishful thinking to say the least. Missing what they brought as football players? Absolutely, that's natural. But some fairy tail that things would have worked out had they stayed? No real way to prove that at all.
Shoot, IF the team had the same 50-60 mil in cap that they have coming up? Totally different scenario on if they keep them around.

 

[vigilantgrrl]

For those who think we needed to ditch Sherm for Cap Space> Cap Space for what???? Luke freaking Joeckel? Ed Dickson who spent most of his time here injured. My God,,,,we are talking about a HOF, probably top cornerback of our era in Sherm. And while he was at odds with Carroll.....he was not a locker room cancer. Sherm was well respected. Sherm always took the younger DB's under his wing and helped them get better.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

All in how you look at it. This whole thing is a matter of opinion. How they play somewhere else doesn't just magically equate to how they would have played here. Plus, this team didn't have the $ to pay Earl and Sherm.

 

[Sgt. Largent]

For those who think we needed to ditch Sherm for Cap Space> Cap Space for what???? Luke freaking Joeckel? Ed Dickson who spent most of his time here injured. My God,,,,we are talking about a HOF, probably top cornerback of our era in Sherm. And while he was at odds with Carroll.....he was not a locker room cancer. Sherm was well respected. Sherm always took the younger DB's under his wing and helped them get better.

You can't put "he was at odds with Carroll" and "he was not a locker room cancer" in the same sentence. You just can't.

Either you buy into what your coach is preaching and selling, or you don't...........and all the great coaches do one thing and one thing only with the players that don't buy in. Gone.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

Shoot, Earl was my 2nd favorite Hawks player. LOVED what Sherm brought on the field as a player.
But just because people like a player, doesn't mean they should ignore that they were both part of their own departure. They started making it about THEM, period. And I'm not buying the "it's a business" crap. They CHOSE to act the way they did.